Frozen and Bridget Jones rated ‘F’ for ‘Feminist’ on IMDB

Iain Lynn

A new 'F' rating for films which highlights female influence has been adopted by dozens of cinemas and the industry bible IMDb.

The feminist film classification was created in 2014 to draw attention to the lack of women working in the movie business.

It makes viewers aware of films which have been written or directed by women or features 'significant' female characters.

The symbol has been adopted by 40 UK cinemas and festivals and now the online database IMDb has tagged 21,800 films with the F-rating.

IMDb founder Col Needham, who lives near Bristol, said: "The F-rating is a great way to highlight women on screen and behind the camera."

The rating was created by Holly Tarquini, director of the Bath Film Festival in Somerset.

She said: "The F-rating is intended to make people talk about the representation of women on and off screen.

"It's exciting when new organisations decide to join us in shining a light both on the brilliant work women are doing in film and on how far the film industry lags behind most other industries when it comes to providing equal opportunities to women.

"But our real goal is to reach the stage when the F-rating is redundant because 50 per cent of the stories we see on screen are told by and about film's unfairly under-represented half of the population - women."

Some films have even been awarded a 'Triple F' rating to indicate movies written, directed and starred by women.

They include Disney's Frozen, Bridget Jones's Baby, The Girl on The Train, Kung Fu Panda 2 and Metropolis.